I must be getting old. Time seems to be going a lot faster now than it used to. I mean, summer is almost over! School is starting soon!
Also, I’m sorry for my failure to adhere to my regular posting schedule on here. I’ve actually been talking with my mentors about various platforms and how much time to invest in them. So things might end up changing around here.
But now, onto my July!
Reading Recap
So I actually didn’t do a very good job of recording what books I read during July. But I wrote down all the ones I could remember reading the other day. And if I remembered all of the books I read, I read twelve books this July. And I had some pretty good reads!
I also bought myself a bunch of books in July, and actually just bought a couple more for Book Lover’s Day, which was August 9th.
It’s hard to choose a favorite out of what I read! They were all really good. But I’ll go with a reread I did, which was The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. I just really enjoy this book, and the entire series, and sometimes you just need a good MG book. But like I said, choosing a favorite read from July is really hard. Lots of good books during July.
Also, one of my mentors, Kara Swanson, had her novel Dust release during July! I’ll have a review for Dust coming up on here shortly, but if you want, you can also read the Amazon review I wrote for Dust here.
And as a quick reminder, if you want to stay up with me more than what I post here, and want to see lots of pictures of books, you can follow me on Instagram! My handle is @huntington.hailey. Plus, I’m toying around with the idea of doing a book giveaway on Instagram in the near-ish future, and if you’re anything like me, you love free books.
Writing Recap
Calculating my word count for July is pretty tricky, so I’m not going to do it. I’ve got to keep my brain cells for writing! I can’t spend them on math (in other words: math is not my strong suit. But I have great respect for all you math people).
If you missed it, I released the facts about Story Teller! And I finished it! And even though I just finished it in August, it is also going into my July Recap. It is finished at 78,876 words! I’m so happy!
I also started my new WIP! Y’all, I am so excited for this story. I love it! It also doesn’t currently have a working title, so I am calling it Rowan’s story. Rowan is my main character. And I love her. I love this story–if you hadn’t already picked up on that.
This is the novel that I’m working on for the Author program. And while I have started writing it, I haven’t gotten too far into it. I wanted to finish up Story Teller before I really started on Rowan’s story so that I didn’t have an unfinished WIP hanging over my head, and so I could really dive all into Rowan’s story. But now that I’ve finished Story Teller, I’m ready to write Rowan’s story!
And if you’re super curious about Rowan’s story now, don’t worry! I’ll be sharing the facts about it soon! Because I made up a concept before starting to write it, it’s a whole lot easier to share about this WIP than it is to share about Story Teller and my other novels.
I also attended two vitrual writer’s conferences this July! I went to Realm Makers again, which was great! (sadly, I don’t have any pictures for you this time. You can look at last’s year’s though!) Realm Makers was really good. I did have to work while the conference was going on, but I have access to all of the conference recordings for a year, so I am looking forward to getting to soak in as much information as I can from the conference!
I’m already roughly planning to go to Realm Makers next year. And my buddies in the Author program have already been scheming about a meet-up someday at Realm Makers, so maybe that will happen next year. . .
I also did the Northwestern Christian Writer’s Conference virtual style, and that was good as well! It was fun to be able to go to another conference.
And I am still working on my email newsletter. It kinda fell off my radar for a little bit, so I forgot about actually working on it. And then I wanted to get my mentors’ opinions about whether or not they thought I should try and juggle one as well as doing this blog and my Instagram. But my lovely mentor Kara told me that if I thought I could swing it to do it! And I think I can. So we’ll see if I’m overestimating my abilities.
How was your July? Did you read anything interesting? Did you get some writing done? I hope your summer is going well!
Hailey Huntington 